Outgoing President’s Note:

David Gawlik
Heads & Threads Int’l

It is hard to believe that the year 2009 is over and has passed so quickly. From a business point of view, I know that many of us are glad to see it go. The last quarter of ‘09 showed some signs that the business climate may be picking up and I know that we all hope that will continue through the year 2010 and beyond.

Looking back at 2009, the MFWA had a successful year with some excellent speakers at our dinner meetings on some very interesting topics. Then we had the Fastener Tech 09 Trade Show and our annual Golf Outing, followed later in the year with the awarding of $ 17,000 in scholarships to deserving students. In addition we had our “Introduction to Fasteners” classes as well as visits to manufacturing facilities.

The MWFA website has been updated and if you have not been on the site in a while I invite you to please visit www.mwfa.net (add this to your favorites). We have a calendar of events for 2010, scholarship applications, photos taken at all of our events, a reader’s corner and even the floor plan for our upcoming table top show.

On a more somber note, I am sorry that we lost two of our long time past members. Last March we lost Tom Seal (Arlington Fastener Co.), a former director. On Christmas day we lost Bill Lang (Certified Products, Inc.), a former director as well as past President of our association. These two fine men will be greatly missed.

Your new MWFA President for 2010 is Rich Pease of Federal Screw Products. He has been a Board of Directors member for a number of years and brings many years of fastener experience to the association. I along with our Board look forward to working with Rich.

I enjoyed being President of the MWFA this past year and learned a great deal. I met a lot of people and enjoyed working with Nancy Rich and the Board; they are a great group of caring people who want to provide the best association possible. I thank all of you for the opportunity and I look forward to seeing you at the upcoming events.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year and the best of Health always !!

Incoming President’s Note:

Rich Pease
Federal Screw Products

As the incoming President of the Midwest Fastener Association. I find myself humbled by the honor, fearful of the challenge, excited by the opportunity, and thankful for the loyalty and respect of our membership. Every president wants to do something that they feel will contribute to the growth of the organization. My goal will be to encourage and advance our ability to train, communicate and to develop better methods to exchange information.

In keeping with our Mission Statement (adopted 1-9-2007)

The MWFA’s purpose is to serve and promote the fastener industry and the ever changing needs of it’s’ membership. Specifically the MWFA is dedicated to representing all segments of the industry; manufacturers, distributors, importers and suppliers to the industry.

You will find that this year the MWFA will be trying new things to improve its communication to each of you. Our Education Committee we will be doing things using Power Point, visual aids, guest speakers along with our experienced "hands on" approach. We will try to parlay this same approach into our dinner meetings.

We have some NEW and upcoming meetings and seminars that I want everyone to take note of:

• Heat Treating – Plating Seminar in February 11th, 2010. – Hosted by SWD.
• April 15th and 16th of this year we are having our first Intermediate training session for more seasoned people in the industry, topics to be covered will be PPAP, Quality Inspection, and more in-depth and up to date information on heat treating and plating, RoHS, and Reach.
• Our Table Top Show and Golf Outing in June

2009 was to say the least a challenging year for all of us, with elections, down turn in the economy, rising health care, anti dumping issues and increased regulations. I must commend David Gawlik of Heads and Threads for guiding the Midwest Fastener Association through these difficult times. Despite all of these issues we had a phenomenal Fastener Tech 2009, Training sessions were well attended, over $17,000 in scholarships were awarded and finally one of the best attended Holiday Parties. Thank you David !!!

Our Association has also gone through many of the same struggles that each of you has had to deal with, but we have been working with our suppliers to keep our costs down. As a result we are proud to keep our dues the same for 2010, making it our 6th consecutive year without an increase.

For anyone that knows of a "displaced or former" member, the Association is allowing these members to attend one of our meetings at the cost of the meal. This is a great forum for these people of our industry to network and hopefully make contacts enabling them to once again become employed in the fastener industry.

Looking forward into our crystal ball to see what 2010 brings to us. Unfortunately if your crystal ball is anything like mine, it is somewhat cloudy, and changes every time you pick it up. Overall I am optimistic and believe that we should consider 2010 a transition year with modest growth.

Good Luck and Good Selling:

Richard Pease – Federal Screw Products